


Pros and Cons of the Jedi Order: Their Intent and Where They Lost There Way

by WingletBlackbird



Series: Jedi History, Organisation, and Culture [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr, cross-posted from tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 14:46:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17003667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingletBlackbird/pseuds/WingletBlackbird
Summary: An analysis of the Jedi Orders doctrine, their hierarchy, their relationship with the Republic, and their relationship with the general populace to analyse what they did well in achieving that goal, and where they finally failed.





	Pros and Cons of the Jedi Order: Their Intent and Where They Lost There Way

## Introduction

This essay started with the intent of trying to look objectively at what the Jedi did well, and what they did not do well. Ultimately, it turned into an essay on how they lost their way. It is undeniable the Jedi Order was a well-meant organisation. However, corruption seeps into even the best organisations. It’s just how things go. People are fallible. After taking a survey, and talking to other fans as well, I tried to organise the various ideas I encountered. I would like to thank [redrikki](https://tmblr.co/m0HH6XSo6EkjGMdlNBiAwhQ), [thendstartsnow](https://tmblr.co/m28VljBtdYLN351YfHdp4rw), [klorophile](https://tmblr.co/meMvpdEXr6pcNGDWxOSQvMg), (Pattes_de_fruits on A03), and [padawanlost](https://tmblr.co/mBskQ_6-FZ-Tkdo9imki0TQ) for their thoughts on this subject. I would also like to thank [gffa](https://tmblr.co/mOXDp331Scsqh2fmGiyb2SA). We seem to have  differing viewpoints on the Jedi, at least at first glance, but I enjoyed our talk nonetheless. 

It appears unanimous that everyone agrees the Jedi Order was an organisation with good intentions. They stood for peace and justice. They stood for freedom. They stood for compassion. They stood for peace. They stood for enlightenment. They stood for selfless service and sacrifice. They should have stood for love. Not surprisingly, on an individual level, it was made up of many great, if flawed, people–characters we all know and love. I think everyone can agree that what the Jedi Order stood for was desirable. The question comes down to execution. I would like to discuss the Jedi Orders doctrine, their hierarchy, their relationship with the Republic, and their relationship with the general populace to analyse what they did well in achieving that goal, and where they finally failed. 

## The Jedi Code

The Jedi Code originally was thus:

_Emotion, yet peace._

_Ignorance, yet knowledge._

_Passion, yet serenity._

_Chaos, yet harmony._

_Death, yet the Force._

This is a very well-balanced approach to life. The Jedi taught that one must understand and accept one’s emotions; only then could one master them. In this way, they were very self-aware, and self-disciplined. This helped prevent them from giving in to the Dark Side. You have your emotions, but you use them only for peace. You are ignorant, but you open yourself to knowledge. There is chaos: There is confusion, and pain, and trauma and  _life,_ but you accept this and find harmony with it. This speaks of a rather unconditional love. It’s beautiful. Accepting of the mess, and bringing peace and hope to it. This relates to the concept of mindfulness and non-attachment: Accepting and processing what is in the moment, without clinging to the pains of the past or the fears of the future. It’s quite a healthy philosophy. 

However, by the time of the prequels this code had become far more…rigid. When Anakin was accepted the Code was more widely taught as:

_There is no emotion, there is peace._

_There is no ignorance, there is knowledge._

_There is no passion, there is serenity._

_There is no chaos, there is harmony._

_There is no death, there is the Force._

As one can observe, the latter iteration of the Code is far more strict, and allows far less breathing room. In theory, the Jedi taught the meaning of the second version of the Code in the same way as they did the first. Accept your emotions, then release them into the Force. There’s nothing wrong with your emotions, but how you handle them is what’s important. However, in practice this was not the case at all. The second version of the Code, according to EU anyway, and it makes sense enough to me, came as a result of the Sith Wars before the Republic as we see it in the Prequels was formed. With so many people falling, the Jedi were trying to do everything they could to police anything that might lead to temptations. Anger, fear, hate, greed, these were all the enemies. Almost as if to remind everyone of this the Code came to include things like “There is no passion.” As if saying that could somehow make it true, (as if passion, which is amoral, could be a bad thing), and Jedi would stop feeling the more dangerous ones. Put bluntly, the Jedi came to fear their own emotions. They may have theoretical only changed the wording and not the understanding of their Code, but words are insidious, and the latter Code encouraged rejection whereas the former promoted acceptance.

This is why Windu was able to say training Anakin was “against the Code,” because he was “too old.” Obviously, this is nowhere in the Code. However, the Jedi had, over centuries, written out how they could best organise their community to prevent any infiltration of Darkness. One of these was that if a child is taken young, and raised in the Temple, they will be less inclined to fall. The reasoning being that they will not be exposed to hate and cruelty until they’re ready. They will not form “attachments” whose loss could lead to revenge, or jealousy. In this manner, they could protect Forcefuls, and the galaxy from the plight of the Dark Side. Hence, Anakin being too old would ultimately lead to a violation of the Code. (As one can see, instead of being all-inclusive and compassionate, the Jedi Order had become narrow-minded. Ironically, this leads to ignorance; it does not prevent it.)

Certainly, these rules were made with good intentions. Unfortunately, over time, these things really became corrupted. Suddenly, in an endeavour to avoid “attachment,” Jedi weren’t allowed to “love.” Hence, the Jedi stopped showing too much overt affection, as if this could deny the truth of how they really felt. They were taught, in theory, that they were allowed to love, just not get attached. They need to be able to do the selfless thing when it counted. However, in practice more and more Jedi were simply taught to repress their emotions. After all, “A Jedi shall not know anger, nor hatred, nor love.” This  suggests emotions are not tolerated, rather than they must be mastered i.e. accepted and released into the Force.  Yoda even gave the advice that Anakin was to neither mourn, nor miss his loved ones when they died. His advice that death is natural and must be accepted is certainly sensible. So is the concept of “letting go.” However, instead of teaching Anakin to accept his emotions and “release them into the Force,” as the early version of the Jedi might have done, he tells Anakin he shouldn’t _feel them in the first place_. He does not guide him through grief, and teach him self-reflection, only repression and denial. This is unhealthy. Thus, the Jedi Order around the Prequels was becoming increasingly toxic to deal with.

Moreover, it wasn’t only in the area of emotional health and stability where they began to fall short, but in their approach to knowledge, and to government. As I touched on above, when they were being taught “ignorance, yet knowledge,” they were open to new ideas and the exchange of thought. However, the Prequel-era Jedi were afraid of exploring new ideas, lest a Jedi lose themselves to the Dark Side. Hence, questioning Jedi doctrine became a difficult thing to do. “There is no why!” as Yoda told Luke. This is unfortunate as questions are necessary to learn and to grow. Moreover, if there is to be no chaos at all, but only harmony, you will observe the Jedi forcing their version of harmony onto others. We can observe these Core-centric, almost imperialist mindset, in Obi-Wan’s approach to cultures he deems “uncivilised,” and the fact that he referred to certain individuals as “pathetic lifeforms,” however much in jest. Ultimately, the Jedi could only believe that their culture was best, and anything else puts you at risk of the Dark Side. If “there is no—-,” than why bother considering other possibilities? It’s funny because, the original Code is sensible, but the one the prequel-era Jedi are using is an “absolute.” Obi-Wan says “Only a Sith deals in such absolutes!” as if he himself, and the Jedi as a whole, weren’t. This is a result of their indoctrination. Their fear of Darkness gave birth to it.

## The Jedi Council(s)

I have less to say on the matter of the Jedi Council. Once again, in theory it’s not a bad practice. I’m not foolish enough to say that any one system works. Having the twelve Jedi, most attuned to the Force and the galaxy, running things makes sense enough to me, especially as the Order was meant to follow the Will of the Force. The wiser, stronger Jedi Masters will be more attuned to that. However, there are some pretty heavy flaws in the system we see in the prequels. Firstly, there are lifetime seats. Yoda has one of them; as he is 900-years old, this can cause some problems. It promotes apathy. Yoda is used to things as they are. He isn’t likely to want to see change. We observe this in his reticence to consider possibilities that are new. The Sith couldn’t be back; we would have sensed it. Anakin shouldn’t be trained; it just isn’t done. He is visibly upset in TPM when he is overruled on that one. You can tell it doesn’t happen often, and he hates it when it does. As Yoda is the eldest by a large margin, the others bow to him more often than not. Complacency and familiarity are rarely the best ways to make decisions. Yoda’s word becomes so powerful, no one questions it, but such scrutiny is necessary to prevent stagnation and, worse, decay.

Nevertheless, Yoda is a powerful Jedi master, and no one is perfect. The above alone is no reason for complaint; age has it’s own wisdom. The main issue to the Jedi Council, in my opinion, is not the centuries one can stay on it, nor the fact that it is an oligarchy; I can make my peace with all of that. The issue is that it elects it’s own members. As such, the council elects members that  _they_  feel support  _their_  position. This can be dangerous. The Jedi Order do not vote on their leaders. They have no say in their leaders. The Council chooses people they like. This enables them to clamp down on opposing perspectives, and can easily stand in the way of alternative perspectives. It is a dangerous way to govern, and promotes ignorance. New ideas are far less likely to get anywhere. 

## Service to the Senate

The Jedi Order originally were independent of the Senate and even the Republic. They devoted themselves only to the service of the Light Side. Sometimes they worked with Republic forces to help take down threats. However, they remained skeptical of government involvement. How could they be sure the Republic would always serve the interests of the Light? Nevertheless, as time passed the Jedi and the Republic did work out a relationship wherein the Jedi served the Republic’s interests, (while retaining their own Council and semi-independence), in return they gained the authority to mete out justice. This was a good thing, as it gave the Jedi the resources and authority to hunt down dangerous criminals, subdue conflicts, promote education, and just generally help people. Certainly, it cannot be said to be a bad things the Jedi and the Republic came to an agreement.

The down side to this came when the Jedi came to fear losing Senate support and how this affected them. As Dooku once said, “they serve the will of the Senate as it it were the Will of the Force.” In fear of becoming what Windu referred to in Jedi Quest, (paraphrased slightly), as “rogue diplomats and vigilantes,” the Jedi were loathe to rock the boat. As a result, outside of their basic, non-controversial work with the judicial forces, and agri-corps, medi-corps, edu-corps, they did not push for other obvious injustices to he taken care of. They just let corruption grow. An example of this is, of course, slavery. The Jedi did not have the resources to eliminate the slave trade. However, they placed no pressure on the Senate to do give it to them[.](https://wingletblackbird.tumblr.com/post/166610471413/lets-free-the-slaves) Moreover, the Senate was slanted, for various reasons, to favour the Core, as such so did the Jedi. They don’t question the usage of the clones. They cut-corners. They become the arm of the politicians, but don’t actively get involved in politics. They just passively allow the nepotism and subsequent cruelty to progress, lest they lose their own authority. (Palpatine wasn’t lying when he told Anakin the Jedi feared losing power. Palpatine’s manipulations work so well, because, honestly, everything he told Anakin was just a means of lying with the truth. He knew it; Anakin knew it.) The problem is, by guarding their authority, they lost sight of why they needed it in the first place. The rich get richer; the poor get poorer.

## The Jedi and Civilians

This leads us, finally, to the civilians the Jedi were supposed to be protectors of. Let it be said here that the Jedi did them a lot of good. They produced food in the agri-corps, provided free healing and education in impoverished areas with the medi-corps, and edu-corps. Their explor-corps also contributed to the fount of galactic knowledge. The Jedi Knights went all over the galaxy trying to track down dangerous criminals, stop civil wars, negotiate treaties, and generally did do the Republic a lot of good. 

However, the Jedi were also a highly isolated culture. Unwilling to form significant attachments with the outside world, they were unable to determine what the significant problems of society were. How could they? They did not live amongst them. They were ignorant of them. Their ability to help was limited by their lack of understanding. If you wish to help people, you need to go out among them and know them and listen to them. The Jedi listened to nobody, and took their orders form the Senate. This was undeniably problematic. They were supposed to protect the people, but did not even understand the people. Shielded from the real-world in their Temple, they looked out at the general populace from an ivory tower, and understood very, very little of what we might call the “real world,” or “real life.” It is unsurprising that Yoda said that arrogance was becoming a concerning trait in the Order. He himself suffered from it, because they presumed to have the right to tell others what to do, when they had never walked in their shoes, nor asked what it felt like to do so. 

It is unsurprising, then, that opinion of the Jedi fell during the end of the Clone Wars. The Jedi were inaccessible to the people. They held themselves apart. Many came to feel these beings with strange powers believed themselves above the little people, and didn’t like it. This sentiment was, of course, encouraged by Palpatine’s control of the media. However, the seeds were sown by the Jedi themselves in their actions.

They also gained the reputation of “baby-stealers” and “sorcerers.” There were rumours that they could control people’s minds…AND HOW DO WE KNOW THEY CAN BE TRUSTED? Their ways were inscrutable and little understood. The Jedi were not, I don’t think, allowed to take Force-Sensitive children without their parents consent. (Although I think to protect the children from the Dark Side during the Sith Wars, they may very well have done so to spare them being raised by someone evil. Make of that what you will… It’s a tough position to be in. During the Rise of the Empire era, however, it was not likely done.) Regardless, they did place pressure on the parents of the children to relinquish custody. The child could struggle without being properly trained, (which is not an unreasonable argument.) The latter, by itself, is not an issue. Nevertheless, as exhibited in the Baby Ludi crisis, the Jedi were willing to mind-trick people who took offense to their methods and disagreed with their methods, and use excessive methods to gain new recruits, (such as not bothering to determine if a child’s parent as actually dead after an earthquake, since the child’s better off being raised by the Jedi anyway.)  As such, people began to see a mysterious organisation who took Forceful children, and refused to be transparent, and mind-tricked people who disagreed with them. It’s no wonder people were concerned! They take our children, and we don’t know what they teach them. Why wouldn’t you be concerned? Isn’t that awfully arrogant? Just trust we know best, because we have the Force? Why should we accept that?

People always fear the unknown and the different. This is not surprising, but the Jedi did not do anything to mitigate these issues. They took children from their families during infancy, did not allow contact during training, and isolated them significantly from other people and perspectives. This is a recipe for arrogance. This is a recipe for Jedi who have little regard or respect for people’s free will. This leads to uncomfortable practices with consent, and if you’re willing to mind-trick people who don’t agree with you, where do you stop? When does consent cease to matter if you know what’s best? Perhaps with the clones? With an army of “disposable people”? The Jedi did a lot of good for the people; I will not deny that, but they did not hold themselves accountable to the people. They claimed to help the community, without even being a proper part of it. 


End file.
